Thoughts are habits. You can't always change your circumstances, but you can change the way you think about them. The more you practice healthy thought patterns, the better you develop good habits.

"Some people can't be fixed. Just try not to be yourself when your decisions affect other people so you minimize the harm you cause them. When you have an instinct to do or say something, the correct action is probably the exact opposite."

Apparently they hate trying to treat people with BPD (Edit: Borderline personality disorder, not bi-polar) because it's damned near impossible and the options available are questionably effective at best.

Go for a walk, be mindful of your surroundings

That'll be $300

"Be on time for your appointment next week"

Here, I hope it will help

The advice is usually pretty common sense and likely nothing you haven't heard before. The main benefit is having a safe space you can discuss your anxieties with a professional and having someone who will listen with minimal judgement. Also sometimes you need to be reminded of common sense when you lose sight of it.

Basically it's a paid friendship without all the other benefits of friendship.

Honestly I wouldn't be going if it weren't fully covered by my husband's insurance.

Mine explained my emotional dysregulation patterns and helped me identify the triggers and how to address them.

By far, the most useful technique they shared with me was the TIPP skills technique, which helps me come down when I am having strong emotional reactions as a trauma response or from anxiety. Essentially:

• temperature - use cold temp to lower heart rate, warm to raise it
• intense exercise - helps manage overwhelming energy levels
• paced breathing - I'm not big on breathing but it works for some
• paired muscle relaxation - my favourite as it also interrupts thought patterns

Hope you're able to access help though, obviously it is much better when personalized and you also get the safe space to release your fears and anxieties

He said 'I'll see you next week'

Your misery cannot possibly be the result a structurally oppressive society, look at how well I'm doing. Now go kick your mom in the vagina and suck dick for therapy fares, and come back next week.

Schizophrenia isn't real and you are the way you are because of social anxiety.

NO! THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE MATTER! I DON'T CARE ABOUT SCANS OF THE NEOCORTEX! THESE ~~100~~ 77 CASES THAT WE CHERRY-PICKED FOR THEIR RESULTS ARE ALL THE EVIDENCE I NEED TO MAKE MY CASE!

YOU'RE WORSE THEN THE TENURE COMMITEE!

I HOPE ALL YOUR PETS DIE AND YOU KILL YOURSELF!

If you’ve chosen to take in the weight of the world, no amount of therapy can solve your problems.

Look into CBT techniques, a big part of it is training yourself to catch bad thoughts as they happen and correct them.

Also breathing techniques

Go live your life. Make some mistakes worth talking about then come back.

Still working on it. Turns out all the stuff I was so scared to do with my life wasn't so dangerous after all.

"being aware of, and able to accurately diagnose the type of mental illness you're dealing with is not the same thing as actually working to fix it"

And

"That's bullshit. Honestly. That's bullshit. Just because you can articulately attempt to justify it doesn't mean it's justified"

Also

"Sometimes things just suck and you have to deal with that for a long time"

I shouldn't be paranoid about him double billing me/my insurance.

Not all therapists are good ones.

Hot take, but I’ve done therapy with like 4-5 different therapists over like 20 years and found it to be of little to no use. What’s been a lot more helpful is just living life with the intent of letting go of past wrongs and making sure that I don’t inflict them on others.

I got a lot of professional advice and guidance in the moment to kick the door to mindfulness wide open. I wish I could share any one thing specific to help anyone replicate the experience. I honestly think this kind of Gnostic awakening has to be tailored to the individual. Also, I was told I was a quick study at this - so sadly, it may take a long time to get there (months to years even).

One exercise we did that helped a lot was to have a discussion with your younger self, and explore what you would say knowing what you know now. Like with a lot of this stuff, the key is to verbalize - it's fundamentally different than talking to yourself with your inner monologue. So you're gonna need a close friend that you can share a LOT of deeply traumatic experiences. Pulling punches and censoring your own speech is just going to get in the way. Fundamentally, this is what we pay counselors for: privacy, not judging, and helping to take out the trash. Group therapy may help here too - I have yet to try this, so YMMV.

On a more specific note, I used to be obsessed with root-cause-analysis for my own psychological problems. I almost got into an argument with my counselor over it, until he was able to help me see the light. You can absolutely figure out why and even how you got this way, but that information will absolutely not help you if you're already in a safe space. It can help you break free of someone or a bad situation, but stuff that happened 30 years ago? Not so much. When you get down to it, there's no "undo" button for trauma, no matter how much you know. Instead, one must look to the present, exercise mindfulness in the moment of anxiety and triggers, and practice walking your headspace back to a more rational place.

Edit: this was all during the pandemic, BTW. I can't say that compares to what we have going on today, but I can confidently say that it's possible to focus on self-help despite all that. It's really possible to separate "things that are going on in the world" and "things that are just me" in your own head, and work on the latter.

ddg is my therapist

Bro just do it you wont. (I got a therapist from betterhelp)